


Justitia’s Hermes

by turnonmyheels



Category: Good Wife (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-17
Updated: 2010-12-17
Packaged: 2017-10-13 17:36:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/139897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/turnonmyheels/pseuds/turnonmyheels
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Life hasn't worked out the way Cary planned.  He is going to rectify that as soon as he can.  Spoilers through 2.08</p>
            </blockquote>





	Justitia’s Hermes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Bozaloshtsh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bozaloshtsh/gifts).



This time last year, Cary had been hosting a holiday fete in his loft. He’d gone all out with the decorating -- then second-guessed his work and actually hired an interior decorator. Perfection had to be assured. Two trees, ropes of light hung from the beams and wrapped around the brick columns; garland, wreaths, and bows of red, silver, gold, and green tastefully adorned every available surface. He’d lit scented candles and had the party catered. Privacy issues meant it wasn’t served, but that wasn’t a problem. Finger foods worked well enough. All of his in-town friends had been invited. A few that lived beyond Chicago’s borders had made a trip into the city just for this. His party.

His small loft hadn’t been nearly large enough to hold all of the guests. Line after pale, winter-white line of Columbia’s finest had been cut on the marble pedestal table. Purchased just to show off the workmanship, cool lines swirling in ostentatious glory beneath an acre of gleaming glass. Guests were encouraged to try a rainbow of pills held in a Baccarat crystal bowl -– a college graduation gift from his maternal grandmother. At midnight, Cary had stood on his very expensive new table, resplendent in a suit and gleaming shoes worth nearly as much, and announced that when _he_ was named Junior Associate at Stern, Lockhart, and Gardner the first thing he was going to do was buy a loft large enough for all his friends to party in.

Everyone had held up their glasses and toasted him.

Now, Cary winced at the memory and sipped his beer in a dreary bar. A cold draft bit at the skin of his neck. Cary tightened the knot in his scarf and darted a quick glance in the mirror to see who had walked in. He didn’t bother to hide the smirk when he saw Detective Anthony Burton, a whole five minutes earlier than they had agreed upon.

Cary had learned a lot about justice versus the law versus reality at his old firm, more than he had realized at the time. Things he’d thought he could leave behind when he went to work for the other side -- he couldn’t have been more wrong. Justice was an ideal. His expensive education and a lot of time practicing memorization meant he could quote the Webster’s definition for both justice and ideal, if necessary. Which he did, often. His co-workers needed the refreshers, sometimes several times a day. Sometimes he did, too.

The detective sat beside him at the bar and passed him an envelope. Cary glanced around the room once more. Satisfied that no one other than himself and Tony cared what they were doing, he deftly opened it and skimmed the contents. Webster’s definition lacked a certain practicality he’d discovered in his transition from burnished halls that barely echoed to cramped, laden cubicles that had. Loudly. He admired the intransitive, dream-like nature both those words held. All the fancy oaths he’d sworn, the beliefs he would uphold, all the plans he’d made, all those carefully choreographed, reachable stages and steps he’d plotted – fantasies. Wishes and hopes best laid upon a star. The last nine months had crushed all of them into coal-hard reality.

If the report he was examining was true, yet another of his so-called “iron clad” beliefs was crumbling with each new sentence.

Once read, he calmly returned the reports and pictures to the envelope and slid it into his briefcase. He sipped his beer; it didn’t burn enough. Cary’d always been a Webster’s boy growing up and 2a had been his favored definition: _ideal 2a: existing as a mental image or in fancy or imagination only; broadly : lacking practicality_. For justice he went one lower: _2b (1): the principle or ideal of just dealing or right action (2): conformity to this principle or idea_.

The beer was definitely not enough. He signaled the bartender for a shot and drank it down. He didn’t comment when Tony did the same. They sat in silence, drinking.

Eventually, Cary spoke. “Are you going to pursue the lead?”

“What lead? The evidence that was gathered went missing. I heard it was in the State's Attorney’s office.”

As a bright and scheming law student Cary had spent many hours practicing facial expressions in the mirror. The best attorneys were better than most actors and so, now, was Cary. Disdain, outrage, sincerity, you name it -- he could convey any emotion at any time, with no preparation or warning. He could also _stop_ his face from showing his genuine emotions. The latter was a far more important skill; he’d discovered and honed it to a razor’s edge in the bowels of Glenn Childs’ office. He schooled his face carefully blank and raised an eyebrow at Tony. “How strange.”

Tony, on the other hand, either had no skill at dissembling or simply didn’t care. “The department loses more leads in the State’s Attorney’s office than it does in court.”

Innocence and a touch of outrage were needed here. He turned to face Tony and let the proper expressions flit across his face. Some people needed to be asked leading questions. Others had to be tricked into giving information. Cary’s favorite people required only silence, a simple, devastating goad to make them fill the void. Detective Tony was rapidly becoming Cary’s favorite person in Chicago, possibly all of Illinois.

“Chicago has always been dirty. Chicago will always _be_ dirty. The only thing that ever changes is whose dirt it is. I don’t know if it’s Florrick or Childs or someone else entirely behind this. My money’s on Childs.”

A neutral shrug was the bow around the pretty speech, and Cary kept his focus on Tony.

“Somebody’s out to get her. It was only a matter of time, really. She rubs a lot of the right people a very wrong way. Hell, I’d give just about anything at all to actually _catch_ her doing something. But this? This is trumped up bullshit. Kalinda does a lot of illegal and unethical shit for that law firm, but she’d never put somebody in the hospital just to win a case.”

Cary couldn’t agree more and merely nodded.

“You worked with her, you know. So.” Tony gave a half-shrugged nod, littering the bar with crumbled, stained green bills before he walked out the door.

This time last year, Cary had been an up-and-coming defense attorney. He was going to pull in six figures, easy, his first year. He’d lock in the JA position; buy a loft that could hold a hundred of his closest friends, screw the hottest pieces of ass he could find, and -- with discretion, of course -- do all the best drugs.

This year Cary was broke. Each month was a careful dance to make rent on that same too-small old loft. He’d tried to hold on to the dream after leaving Stern. A month. Then two. There was always a way, and working all the angles was second nature to him.

So was seeing things for what they really were.

Dreams were difficult, ephemeral things. Revenge was utterly tangible. Attainable.

Childs' office was a thickening, drowning quagmire of intrigue that dated so far back he’d probably been in grade-school, if not a twinkle in his father’s eye, when it started. Fighting it was like quicksand, and some forgotten scrap of reading told him it was best to float. To accept. Neither of which were easy, but Cary was smart and adaptable. He learned.

Mornings, the mirror showed an unrecognizable man. Hair this shade of too long. Skin pallid and with a touch of gray rather than the fresh-faced, rosy cheeks that had worked so well for him with juries. Juries didn’t like it when prosecutors looked like they were on the tail end of a three-day bender, black bags hanging, puffy and bruise-like, under their eyes.

It’s why they disliked Will Gardner so much. Cary idly wondered if he knew.

Tilting his glass, Cary looked at the amber liquid below. It offered no reflection but he was a creative man, and conjuring the image wasn’t difficult. He didn’t want to be that man he saw. The realization was easy – who would want to be old and sick looking at not even thirty? The second realization was harder, but somehow more freeing: he didn’t want to be someone who subverted the law, either.

Revenge was attainable, but it tainted both parties. Cary wanted what he’d been before. He had no illusions about what kind of man he was; nice or proper never figured in the equation, and cutting corners wasn’t so much a necessity as part of the process. But those ideals that had tarnished under reality’s grind could be shined again, cleaned up. He could have justice _and_ the regimented fantasies law schools still taught.

He could.

Cary threw money down on the bar, collected his briefcase and shrugged into his overcoat. The wind howled during his walk back to the loft and Cary kept his head down the whole way. He’d keep the file on Kalinda. Make sure the investigation would never go any further. He’d even give her an unsubtle warning -– Cary deplored being unsubtle -- that someone was out to get her.

After that, he’d slide the file into the fireproof safe he’d had built in behind a bookcase in his loft, right beside the other files he’d been collecting. The last of his Lockhart and Gardner money had gone into purchasing that safe.

Best damn money he’d ever spent.

Cary smiled genuinely when he added the folder to his collection. He ran his fingers over the many tabs – starting to turn soft the way paper got when it aged -- and imagined them growing fatter and fatter. Information was the key to power, the entrance fee for everything he wanted. Someday, possibly soon, Cary would have enough to make his move. Glenn Childs, Peter Florrick, Wendy Scott-Carr; each of them worked to their own distinct agendas, and the only winner they cared for was the name they splashed around so damn eagerly. Obvious egocentrism. Someday, maybe even in the not too distant future, all the jigsaw pieces he’d seen would be put together into a picture. It wasn’t the goal that Cary was interested in, though. It was the rules. You couldn’t play – couldn’t break them – without knowing what they were.

Soon.

There were other folders in the safe. Alicia Florrick and Will Gardner had one together as well as a separate folder for each; Diane Lockhart; Eli Gold; a surprisingly large and damning file on Derrick Bond.

The folder named Kalinda Sharma was placed in alphabetical order into their midst. It was the smallest. It held the most damaging and, most likely, fraudulent information.

But Cary couldn’t imagine a better person whose secrets he could collect. In Chicago, everyone who was anyone owed her for something.

Now she owed _him_.

Cary closed the safe and moved the book case back in front of it. A mirror just above again showed the face of a stranger. Maintenance, he reminded himself, turning away as the pages of Webster’s dictionary flickered back to Justice. 1a, this time. _The maintenance or administration of what is just, especially by the impartial adjustment of conflicting claims or the assignment of merited rewards or punishments_.

He would be an agent of justice, Cary promised himself. He would be impartial. He would allow the court of public opinion to assign rewards or punishments.

All he had to do was finish building his case.


End file.
